Happy Patch and More . . .

Yesterday was a brave day for picking huckleberries.  My sisters came with me to the huckleberry patch in Heaven, as did their dogs.  

Odds were much better yesterday that someone would see or hear the bear coming in time for us to hug our buckets and run to the car.  

Odds were also that two of the someone's might trip over a dog leash while on the run. Yesterday that would have not been good for Laurie, as you can see by her right hand.  

I had been the lone huckleberrier for two days and the sole sufferer of a sore wrist for a month. 

Now I have company.  

Knowing I have company doesn't make my wrist feel any better, but somehow having company eases the load of suffering alone.

"I now feel a little more sorry for you," Laurie told me yesterday morning while recounting just how she sprained or at least jammed her wrist the night before.  

Her story was much better than mine---I was simply walking down a road.  Laurie was knocking down a hay pile so the hay pile would not fall over by itself and land on the hay crew. 

Whenever hay hooks let loose of the hay bale, the hand and the body at the head of the hook go flying.  

Laurie caught what fall she could with her right wrist.  Then, she got up and started pounding on those hay bales with her dominant hand to get them to tumble downward.

Some of us farm girls just don't know when to quit.  Getting a job done often gets in the way of common sense and worries about further injuring the body. 

Well, Laurie was pretty lucky when she realized that the wrist sure did hurt,  cuz Barbara had a right-handed wrist brace from some time back when, according to Barbara, "Nobody felt sorry for me."  

I guess we must not have extended any sympathy cuz I couldn't remember when Barbara did her wrist in. 

Anyway, it was kinda fun to share "ain't it awful" stories with my sister.  Tales of injured wrist woe included everything from not being able to button pants or twist door knobs to "raking is just out of the question," unless you use the other hand as Laurie did yesterday. 

The injured wrists still allow us to pick huckleberries.  I do wonder, though, how Laurie managed it all yesterday in that Huckleberry Patch in Heaven while holding her bucket and to her dog at the same time, but she came back with berries enough.  

Farm girls are resilient and innovative, so when there's a will---especially the will to sip on a savory fresh huckleberry shake----farm girls find a way. 

Both Barbara and Laurie picked enough berries to enjoy their shakes last night, and I doubled my intake of berries. 

After all, my wrist still knows how to hold a bucket, I did not have to hold a dog and I had extra sentries in the patch to alert me of impending bear attacks.  

At the Love house, huckleberry sundaes won out over shakes, and the rest of the berries went in the freezer.

It was a good day to be a huckleberry picker. 

Happy Friday.